Phonological encoding by hearing children of deaf parents

Abstract

Eleven hearing children of deaf parents were tested on a serial recall task with pictured items to determine the form in which they encode information for short-term recall. All children were fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) as well as spoken English. More item-ordering errors were made on lists of phonologically similar items than on lists of sign-similar or unrelated items. An examination of the children's rehearsal strategies revealed greater use of phonological than signbased rehearsal, even when the children were required to recall the list items in ASL. It was concluded that, even though the majority of the children reported that their proficiency in ASL was superior to their proficiency with spoken English, they made greater use of phonological than sign-based encoding on the serial recall task.